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ICvAsOj /YAc •;« ■ ' j: :4{ r 272 'Stewart St, Ottawa, Canada April 25, 1946 A group of us here is trying to form a Civil Liberties Association, whose first job will be to tackle the myriad breaches- of civil liberties in the government's "spy case" procedure. Pour of us ' have produced the enclosed report, which has not been approved or rat­ ified because there is, as yet, no body to do so. Therefore, if you should happen to wish to use any of it in any way, no reference must be made, except perhaps to "a faet-finding committee in Ottawa." The facts are all accurate, So is the opinion, we feel, but it is merely that of us four. I thought that you in particular, being a Canadian, 1 , might be interested, but I think Miss Kirchwey will find considerable horrified fascination at the detailing of injustices contained therein. / Incidentally, the CLA of Toronto has protested to the government about the "star chamber" methods used, since this report was, made up, and I've just seen an editorial of Bruce Hutchison's in the Winnipeg Free Press of Apr. 11 which says, in part: "For the first time* when the country is not at war, the Government of Canada has repealed,>> for all practical purposes, this most fundamental of all lawsxx*Hdxk±&kaitfc (the right of every citizen to a faijxtrial, no matter how guilty he<may b e l C^and pubTi< _ •^ánd without consulting Parliament, it has conducted a secret trial, by virtue of a secret order-in-council, found the prisoners guilty and handed them over to a jury with the findings of JÜwx&BqpxHraKx&HDtxi two 1 judges of the Supreme Court already made. Not only is a fair public trial before an unprejudiced jury thus made impossible, but the highest court of the land has been made a party to this distortion of the courts and seriously discredited by its willingness to participate in such a pro­ cess." ISKXXXSZX ' !y A kind of spearhead group, mostly CLA members, in Toronto , feis1 trying to get quick action on this problem, as the CLA is still busy ?on the Japanese-Canadian problem. It consists of Malcolm Wallace, Nfed' Pratt, Carleton Stanley, Barker Fairley,- Dean Beatty, Prof. DeLury,acwst, Edx Corbett and others less given tO' paper protests than some, ’i'hey're trying to arrange a public protest meeting (as we are here) and to raise money for a defence fund (as we hope to here eventually, though now it is impossible because of widespread caginess about even taking a stand on the primary civil liberties aspect, let alone activating that stand by helping the defendants into a position of being able to fight back properly against the enci&chmentsT) „ Yours sincerely,\^a>Js/\ ■rriendruat called to the phone to be told that Dr..David Shuear. a trie* involved, has been discharged — no evidence*! -- anugar, a THIS IS THE REPORT OF A FACT-FINDING COMMITTEE On February 15» 194-6, plain-clothes officers of the Roydl Canadian Mounted Police entered homes and seized 13 persons without showing warrants of arrest. These 13 were rushed to the RCMP barracks at Rockcliffe, outside Ottawa, and were held there, uncharged and incommunicado, for periods varying in length from two and a half to six weeks. The 13 were eventually charged with offences under the Official Secrets Act and, in a few cases, under the Criminal Code as well. Meanwhile, they were questioned, without any access to counsel; first — several times — by RCMP officers; then --- several times ■*- by the two members of a Royal Commission set up for this investigation and by the commission’s counsel. Reports were issued by the Royal Commission which stated that the 13 — naming them publicly — were guilty of certain stated offences, and presented portions of the alleged evidence on which they had pronounced their verdict. Then the 13 were brought to court, charged, and released on bail. This procedure struck certain persons as so completely in contrast to the procedure set forth by law, and adhered to in Britain and hitherto in Canada — with some wartime deviations — that they decided to find out what they could about the breaches of civil liberties evidently involved. They offer this report oh the facts they have found. ON THE SEIZURES. AMD TREATMENT WHILE DETAINED •* - OnuFebrilary 15, thirteen persons were seized, with much of their property, by plain^clothes RCMP office: s who in some cases at least showed no warrant. The Prime Minister made a statement which did not. state the number of those involved. This led to published estimates of from 400 down to an Associated Brass count, from Ottawa, of 22. The result of this, in our opinion, was to give the affair an aspect of enormity which the facts did not warrant, thus prejudicing public opinion unduly against the suspects. On February 25, A.Warwick Beament, K.O., told thejottawa papers that he wished to protest Mthe complete lack of humanitarian attitude" shown by RCMP authorities in their "arbitrary action" against the 13 suspects. He said his client had not been allowed to have his wife notified of his detention. She did not learn of it until six days later. Mr. Beament said that a request to allow his client's wife to see her husband "under whatever conditions or circumstances the police dictate’.' had been repeatedly refused. The only coi munication so far, he said, was between husbands and wives, by censored mail. It was two and a half weeks - March 4 - before the first visits of wives were allowed. Also on February 25, H.P. Hill, another lawyer stated publicly: • \ "The position of counsel engaged by the detained persons' families has been greatly embarrassed by the unique ruling of the Royal Commission that the persons detained are not to have legal advice at this time. "For such an extraordinary limitation on the principle of British justice there can be only twoSpeasons. The first is that by barring counsel from their clients no instructions can be given which would lead to their release. No counsel would be willing to take stich a serious step as, for example, habeas corpus proceedings, without consultation with his clients. feThe only other possible reason is that the Royal Commission does not trust the members of the local bar to keep silent about information given them by their client "The first of these reasons is a sad commentary on the way in which our individual liberties are gradually being encroached upon. "The second reason betrays a disturbing lack of confidence in the discretion of the‘legal profession in which the public must have confidence if our system of justice is to be maintained." The wife of one of the seized persons gave a statement which was published in PM on February 27. They seized her husband, she said, at 6 a.m., then searched the apartment, without showing any warrant. They took a 'few shares of stock belonging to her, a copy of the Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, all her personal letters and Christmas cards, her typewriter, copies of Hansard, telephone books, maps of the world and of Ottawa. (P.C. 6444 permits the Minister of Justice to authorize any RCMP to "seize any article found on the premises which the said member of the RCMP has reasonable grounds for believing to be evidence that secret and confidential information has been communicated to agents of a Foreign Power.") She called a lawyer, who seven hours later had dug up the Prime Minister's official statement - nothing else. Next morning her lawyer learned one thing more - she could send her husband books. She took three to an RCMP official in the Justice Building, He OK'd two murder mysteries, but rejected an anthology whichr-she had just bought at a bookstore. "You can't send that ini" he said. I "Spirit of Canadian Democracy" was the title. I*heh, she said, he made insulting remarks about her husband: "He’s been behaving like a barrack-room sergeant - demanding this and thatl" Then, she said, he told me "in a sneering tone of voice" that her husband had asked for a Bible* Unable ,to sleep, she rose after midnight and wired a protest to a high government official, one of whose underlings telephoned her that morning not to "do anything rash," She also wired a protest to the Prime Minister, but got no reply. On Monday she authorized a lawyer to represent her husband, but he was refused access to him. It was a week, she said, before even the lawyer was informed under what authority her husband was being held. It was 12 days after the seizures before P.C. 6444, passed October 6, 1945, was published. That was February 27, 1946. The same day another wife’s statement was published in Canadian papers. She said she had been out of town when her husband was seized, and "no one took the trouble of informing me. what had happened." When she got back, six days later, she found a letter from her husband in the mail. For six days, she said, her husband had been denied information as to her whereabouts, and as to whether she knew of his arrest, For three days he was refused information as to the authorization under which he was held. At first he was told he could get no legal help, then after three days he was told he could have counsel and could write letters, but could see neither lawyer nor wife.

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